App framework popularity report (another update)

The long tail gets longer!

Note: this shows relative popularity of *new* apps using *clickstarts* to get started - and thus is an interesting leading indicator of what people are trying out/starting with.

There has been quite a lot of activity since the last report - the most notable change is the "long tail" is getting longer - Javascript makes a good showing, as always (AngularJS - some great growth!, node.js, Backbone.js).

The good old trusty ones are still there: Hibernate/Tomcat, Facebook and Scala/lift (holding strong).

Some interesting changes:

Up : Tomcat7 (new), AngularJS, iOS starter app with CouchDB (new). Google App Engine with Python.

Down : Clojure/compojure (where's the love!), Hibernate/Tomcat (perhaps Tomcat7 took some of the interest)

Summary: new clickstarts, unsurprisingly, are quite popular when they first come out (Tomcat7, long awaited for, and the iOS starter app), and of course - the tail is lengthening. Play2 is still on top, by a long shot, general growth and lengthening tail makes this less obvious but it is still very popular. A mixture of languages is becoming apparent (Javascript is everywhere - client and server, python is clearly a hit with GAE, scala holds strong - and of course, iOS is a core factor with some of our biggest customers - I expect to see more here).

I am not crazy enough to predict what the next report will be like - it is muddied by the fact that we are introducing new things into the mix each month (we are working on better ways of presenting the clickstarts to make it clear what each one offers, what the support for it is like, popularity etc).